Elizabeth was the third daughter of Andrew Clephane, Sheriff of Fife and Kinross. She lived most of her life in Melrose, Scotland, about 30 miles southeast of Edinburgh. She spent most of her money on charitable causes, and was known locally as The Sunbeam. Clephane’s hymns appeared posthumously, almost all for the first time, in the Family Treasury (1872), under the general title of Breathings on the Border.